“I think…” Carmen paused. “I think I understand that she was in a lot of pain. But she didn’t just rid herself off it. She passed that pain on to everyone else when she decided to end her life. And I think it’s that part I don’t understand. I don’t understand why she’d pass on that pain to all those who loved her, to those who’d never done her wrong.” Carmen looked down at her hands, running her forefinger against her palm. “It makes me wonder: who was she really punishing?”
“You keep asking yourself questions like those and the only thing you’re going to get in return is more unanswerable questions, Carmen.”
“I need to learn to put this whole thing to rest, don’t I?” Her lips curved up into a shaky smile. “I can’t keep letting it have such a huge hold on me, Dad. It’s not letting me connect with anyone—with Joyce, or Willa. I even met this other girl, Lyra, who seemed really nice, but I never made a move to let that acquaintance progress into a friendship because that would mean opening up myself to them and letting them in. Showing them parts of my world, my life.”
“You connected with Asa, though,” her dad commented, curiosity evident in his tone as he shot a look from the corner of his eyes at Carmen. “How’d that happen?”
A ripple of pain tore through Carmen, forcing her to tear her eyes away from her dad’s.
“He was different,” she whispered, an image of him grinning with that trademark mischievous glint in his eyes flashing in Carmen’s mind.
“Different how?”
Carmen didn’t answer that immediately, taking her time to gather her thoughts that seemed to be running wild lately and formulating them into words and coherent sentences. Sentences that would do Asa justice. That she could give him at least, for now.
“It was effortless,” she eventually said, feeling her stomach tie into a gigantic knot before it slowly loosened up and untangle itself, soothing her insides. “Getting to know him, growing attached to him and then eventually falling for him… it was so effortless.”
Her dad tilted his head to the side, frowning slightly. “Then why did things go wrong?”
Carmen smiled sadly. “Like I said, falling for him was effortless. So much so that I forgot that relationships weren’t.”
“Honey, you were in no position to get involved in a relationship. Not yet, anyway. Falling in love is one thing, but pursuing that is a whole other matter. Why would you let him think you were ready when you weren’t?” Her father’s brows were pinched together, a whirlwind of worry and grief swimming in his sea-green eyes.
Carmen looked down at her lap, playing with her fingers, the guilt and shame overwhelming her all of a sudden.
“Because—” she paused to steady her trembling voice, her breaths turning heavy “—because he told me he loved me in a time when I needed to hear it, and it felt…it just felt nice to be loved. I’d lost Mum, lost Hunter, was slowly losing my dad. And then this boy—this amazing boy who always gave up on himself but never on others—comes strolling into my life one September afternoon and makes me feel like I’m actually the centre of someone’s world. His world. And after feeling unloved for so long, I didn’t want to let go of that. Of him. I couldn’t.”
Her dad didn’t say anything for a while, keeping his mouth pressed into a firm line for several seconds. He didn’t look too happy though, Carmen noticed. And she didn’t blame him.
“Carmen,” her dad finally said, voice gentle but stern at the same time. “The boy loves you. He really does. It was obvious from the fight itself.” He searched Carmen’s face for a brief moment, and she wondered what it was that he was looking for. “But if you’ve never loved him, if it was his attention and affection for you that you loved instead, then you need to let him know. The pain your mother left behind has caused enough scars and inflicted enough hurt. Don’t let an innocent get caught in the crossfire of the war this family’s fighting.”
There was life’s cruel sense of irony again. This whole thing had started when Asa had made Carmen a casualty of the battle he was fighting inside his head the instant he took her journal.
And now it was coming to an end because Carmen had dragged Asa into a war that had been raging within her soul for a while.
“He’s going to hate me,” she said, voice thick with so many emotions. Emotions that she had never let Asa see. Emotions that could’ve prevented a lot of pain if she had let them out sooner..
“Maybe,” her father said. “But if you keep one foot out the door and one foot in, if you keep dangling maybes in front of him, then you’re not letting him grow as a person. You’re clipping his wings, love. So if you really care about him, if anything you felt for him during the months you’ve known him was real—even if it was for just a single moment or just a cluster of seconds—then let him go. Set him free, Carmen.”
She thought about Asa, then, of his fingers brushing against hers as he placed the broken crayons into her palm; of his lips against her cheek in the art room when he’d thanked her for existing; of his arms wrapped firmly around her as he’d corrected her theory regarding binary pairs.
He had loved her, hadn’t he? He had. Even when she didn’t give him every single piece of her, he’d found the
